Charming as a clean baby

My fella is a cat person in several meanings of the word. Including the fact that he has more than a few toes over the line into the autism spectrum. To say he lacks empathy for people would be putting it mildly in general but he does relate well to the many cats that various women in his life have bestowed upon him. He views my smarty-pants old lady Sheltie with mild alarm but was so kind and good when she became horribly ill with gastric bleeding from eating commercial dog food to which she had developed an allergy. Then, when I got sick and was in the hospital, he actually had to make her food, which entails cooking chicken thighs to a pulp and  removing the bones by hand; a nasty, greasy business that he tackled manfully.  It weirds him out that she understands language and does what you tell her, though. I have noticed that he has started trying to talk to her in dog. She comes up to smell the eau de chat all over his sweatpants and he says to her, "Harfle harfle." She looks at him like a hostile Frenchman at a fat American parley-voooing. I think it is charming that he is trying to relate to her. She finds it charming when he obeys her nose-point signals and gets her a treat from the bag in the cabinet.

Volunteers Welcome

As a rule, I go to the garden center in the fall, get tulip bulbs, and commandeer my neighbor's unused crisper in his fridge to chill them in. I like to celebrate New Year's Day by going out and planting them, generally in horrible weather. Last year my feet were crippled up from surgery so I made OoA#2 do it. This year I didn't even get around to buying the bulbs. Tulips do not generally return in the South, the heat and rain rot the bulbs. This little guy decided to make a comeback despite the odds. He is all pink cuteness in an otherwise straggly bed; there are quite a few other tulip leaves but his bloom is the showoff so far. Spring is awesome.

C'mon Spring

These little Scilla are awesome. This is my favorite color. They are the bluest flowers I know.

Pink Tree

My pinkberry camera doesn't take accurate pictures of red and pink things. This Japanese magnolia in front of my house isn't purple, it's fairly light pink. But I had to get a closeup of it anyway. When OoA#1 was small, and so often sick in the spring, she was electively mute much of her childhood, from about age 13 months to nearly six years old. One way to get her to talk was to plop her in the carseat if she was sick and drive all around town and play "Pink Tree!!!"; as in, whoever spots it first gets to yell in the car,"Pink Tree!" She wasn't much on yelling but she was born competitive. So I would spot some and call them first to aggravate her, and then pretend not to see one, and pretty soon the backseat would be chirping, or croaking if that was what she was doing that week, "Pink Tree! Pink Tree!" Our part of town has one in about every fifth yard, and she would be delighted if she got one she knew for sure I hadn't seen first.  Even sleepy or cranky, she would rouse herself to point one out I'd missed, and still does it sometimes. 

She's been really upset lately. She sent out eight graduate school applications and got cut immediately from the first, super-competitive ones. But she made it into final consideration at four others, apparently; they sent her rejection letters only this last week. Another place sent her something to our house inviting an application, so she has two apps still to hear from and the one new one to apply for. Her professor called around; her GPA, which was in the toilet her freshman year due to pretty much abysmal advising by her faculty advisor at the time, and which she has been slaving to bring up, put her behind some candidates who had not wanted to go to grad school until the economy tanked their jobs. Once they were out of work, their easy A's from state schools gave them the leg up. Depressing. I wish I could put her in the back seat again and we could drive around and let her beat me at Pink Tree, and that would make it better.

Stylin'

I got my CPAP machine today. It makes me look like a Star Trek bad guy. Awesome. The "mask" is cool though, not mask-y. It has a baby-blue head harness and this nosestopper thingy for the air. I can't wait for bedtime, I have the hook-up. And it's pretty creepy too; it's got Big Brother on the thing to show how often you use it and for how long. So Medicare cheaters can't cheat with it. Big Brother has a memory chip watching my ass not snore. Whoo Hooo!!!!

Awesomeness

I planted these daffodils so many years ago I can't recall; maybe seventeen. I've dug up lots and given them away, and my neighbors have patches of them that make me happy too. They just started blooming this week and I looove them. They smell nice but I usually don't cut them, they last weeks outside. Spring is my favorite.

Meanness

So OoA#2, boyfriend, is terrified of children. He is also terrified of flying monkeys, witches, and munchkins, but children are more common and equally terrifying to him. He is a nice guy generally but grumpy by nature to people he is very close to. It drives his mother mad and made his previous fiancee' apopletic with rage; he will literally say no when he means yes just as a reflex and growl when asked for assistance. It's gotten really annoying lately and we've actually had some huge, one-sided fights about it, with me getting hugely angry and him apologizing but once I'm mad, I'm mad. And I'm tired of discussing it with him. So today we were at the hockey game and the folks in front of us had their little baby man, about eight months old, and he was grinning at us. I scooped him up and let him grab my fella and just squeeze the crap out of his shirt and hair and everything his spitty little precious paws could grab. Cute as shit. OoA is steadily protesting, squirming, asking me to stop, stating ow, while we are laughing foolishly, egging on the baby, and taking pictures. I did it twice. The baby had a ball. Once we got home OoA remonstrated with me; after all, he had asked me to stop. "How does it feel?  When someone knows you'll be upset but you do something anyway." I asked. "Oh. You were getting me back. That's not like you." He was amazed.  We'll see if he learned anything.

Memaw Car's White Dress

Memaw Car had a white dress moment two mornings running. She did not know what to do with herself. The next day she was actually buried in the snow, about four inches. That has never happened to her before. Ice, yes. The snow was all gone by the second afternoon. She's still surprisingly clean, I thought it would make her look really grimy again. 

Scilla me

I have blue pots out front that I planted Scilla in last year. One teensy flower is blooming now and a herd of green stems. I hope I get more blue with all that green. Love those little blue flowers to pieces.

Talking Dog

Object of Affection #2 is a cat-person who is constantly astounded by the amount of language the old lady dog can process. On days when her ears ring she has a lot of trouble but days like today are hilarious and add to my reputation as the eccentric on the block.
 I heard the yowl of a catfight and went to the door thinking I would need to rescue my timid calico from the fierce one next door. The dog came out with me to see what was up. There was a feral tom under the neighbor's truck who had engaged the neighbor's calico, who had fled under another car. The tom yielded to my yelling and scampered for the ditch. Old lady dog had a flash of her old cat herding days and took off after him, barking fiercely until he crossed the gasline. She was trotting back to the house, tail up, triumphant, when the feral tom advanced back over the gasline. I told her, "Go back over there and tell that cat what you really think of him." She turned, took off at a run, and barked him all the way across the ditch and into the bushes behind the apartments beyond.  There was some serious prissing of dog tail after that. Of course she got a dog treat for world's smartest bad cat eliminating dog.  I told OoA#2 and he scoffed a little, then asked her if she had chased a strange cat. "Harf!" was the happy reply. He just shook his head.
 I never have told him about the time she told me she thought she may have mistakenly eaten some astronaut.

Paper White Persistence

So we had this spell of way-ass cold frozen beyond Yankee foolishness weather. It was completely uncalled for, with lows in the 'teens night after night and water mains breaking all over town. I have this patch of paperwhites way out back that I saved from a demolition site a bazillion years ago and I give them to people who want them. They bloom early because they are in a spot which is usually warm by the ditch. I thought they would be mulch after coming up and getting the hell frozen out of them like that. All the leaves laid down flat like they were done for the year, better luck next year. But a lot of the stems that got flattened by the frost went ahead and bloomed anyway. Their scent is too strong to bring them in the house but they get extra points for perseverance. I just sniffed a few without picking them, maybe I will go and deadhead them when they have bloomed out. The poor bees could use a few pollen sources.

Heavenly Goodness

My sis sent me not one but two boxes of Meyer lemons from the trees in her backyard and that of her neighbor. Imagine having so many of these you have to mail them to people to get rid of them. She juices them and makes marmalade until she is heartily sick of them but there is nothing that smells as good as Meyer lemon in wintertime. Lavender in spring is a close second but you can flat eat a Meyer lemon and you have to do a lot to lavender to eat it, like put it through a bee.

Damn Dog

I am seriously considering harming this poor old lady dog. She is just too smart for her own damn good. So, she is very old, and started vomiting blood, for fuck's sake, over Labor Day holiday. I thought surely she was dying. I tempted her with bits of chicken, hoping she wouldn't die, and gradually over a few days she began to eat again, refusing commercial food. I ended up buying a big new half-price Crockpot on sale to fix the dog her own chicken and vegetables. I can't cook it overnight because when it begins to smell done she starts to whine and drive me batshit crazy. So I spend two days a week preparing dog cuisine, essentially. Today I used the Crockpot to make a pulled pork roast for OUR dinner. The dog cannot have pork, she will vomit everywhere. I fed her a nice dinner of chicken and veg while I got ours ready. She has been whining ever since. I could not figure out what the hell was wrong with her, she was obviously not in pain or wanting outside. She went in the kitchen and tipped over a few things and I realized. She is annoyed that I made pork, succulent delicious excellent smelling pork, and ate it, and gave it to OoA2, She is pissed that I used HER crockpot to cook in and did not give her what was obviously her food. She is looking at me: "Bitch".
Damn old lady bossy ass dog.

Whew

Object of Affection #1, beloved and beautiful and good-smelling daughter, has left the driveway enroute to college. Thank God and all her angels. I love that child beyond reason but she is in full houseguest mode. I can't seem to get her to kick in to adult ownership of this house and its duties, much less come and take care of my sick ass. Since I have been feeling ill, I just wish she would stay with her grandfather when she is in town and come over to visit when she is bright-eyed. It would really hurt her feelings but I may ask her to do that if she doesn't go somewhere fun at Spring Break and I'm not feeling chipper. I asked her to do specific things, and I talked to her about not feeling up to entertaining, and wanting her to pitch in and take ownership of things around the house. Bottom line; she did the laundry last night, and loaded the dishwasher, but everything else for the last ten days needs doing now, and I'm tired from the cooking and shopping. She did a little better controlling her migraines this visit; sometimes she comes home without any medicine and just has one continuous headache. I had those in college too, but I sent her to the neurologist and expect her to keep her medicine on hand so she's not a patient when she gets here.

 A lot of this blues riff comes from being raised by maids, and having lost my long-time housekeeper who I felt like was my anchor. Mess makes me sad, because there's no one to take care of me. Picking up after myself is okay, even though it makes me feel faint now and I have to do it in small doses. But doing it after other people makes me devastated, like I'll never feel happy again. I know that's stupid, but now that my housekeeper of 16 years has had her back spoiled by surgery, I don't have any easy rush of endorphins from coming home to the reassuring smell of Pine-Sol and Murphy Soap. Losing my housekeeper was a lot harder on me than having my Dad die and deciding to stop seeing Voldemom. My housekeeper gave me such a gift every week of order and peace and was always supportive and encouraging.  I didn't even have to see her for her to make me so incredibly happy just walking in the door.
  Having to fight so hard to get my disability money, I would be hard put to juggle the money to pay her but I've eaten beans to keep her employed before, and I'd sure do it now. I just have a couple of months to muddle through this, get back to work somehow, and find a housekeeper I trust again. Walking in the house on a Thursday afternoon to dusted shelves and vacuumed floors, things I didn't have to ask anyone to do, no please, just thank you....oh that is what love feels like, I am sure.  Meanwhile, I think I have to put on sweet eyes and ask Object of Affection #2, boyfriend, if he will please vacuum all this dog hair. Argh. Asking. Or do it myself and be too tired to do anything else today.

Overwhelming talent at Thursday night dinner

Whole wheat baguette; wild-caught orange roughy with white-wine reduction and mushroom sauce; crab and cheese cake; crab-stuffed mushrooms; salt and garlic crusted Yukon gold baked potato; salad is romaine with gold cherry tomatoes and home-made balsamic dijon vinaigrette. The mushrooms are a favorite of Object of Affection #1, were deemed successful and the fish spectacular by OoA #2.  He likes my salad dressing and potato awfully well. OoA#1 is DD to most bloggers OoA #2 is boyfriend to most. I like my nomenclature.